This 20-minute Dill Turmeric Pilaf with Pistachios is one elegant dish that you'll be making over and over again to serve your family and your guests. It is delicious, packed with exotic and yet pleasing flavors, and the best part is, it is so easy and quick to make. A vegan, gluten-free and soy-free recipe. Can be nut-free.
Dill is perhaps one of the most underused herbs in our kitchens, and it's really not fair because this is an outstanding herb that can magically transform a drab recipe into a spectacular one, with its slightly bitter, slightly sweet and incredibly delicious flavor profile.
In India, dill is eaten as a vegetable. Vegetable vendors who'd line the streets with their straw baskets would sell it under the Marathi name, shepu, and I have memories of my mom cooking it up into a tasty sabzi, or a vegetable side. Dill is also a nutritional star: it aids digestion, has anti-inflammatory benefits, lowers cholesterol, and prevents bone loss. It also helps cool the body, making it a perfect summer food.
All that goodness packaged in those delicate, wispy, feathery leaves: OMG!
In my kitchen, I often use dill to make pilafs like this one. Rice is the perfect vehicle for dill, because it soaks up all of that delicious flavor. For my easy 20-minute Dill Turmeric Pilaf with Pistachios, I need just seven main ingredients: rice, bay leaves, cardamom, onions, turmeric, pistachios, and dill. You can add in some vegetable stock for a deeper flavor, or use water for a cleaner taste.
Try serving this Dill Turmeric Pilaf with Pistachios with a side of a spicy recipe, like my Tofu Makhani. Or eat it by itself, with nothing more than a poppadum cracker. Either way, it's gorgeous.
Try these vegan rice recipes next:
- Brown Rice Pilaf with Fenugreek Leaves
- Savory Mango Pilaf with Cashews
- Cauliflower Wild Rice Pilaf
- Hyacinth Beans Masala Rice Pilaf
- Mushroom Biryani
- Coconut Rice
- Lemon Garlic Rice
- Garlicky Zucchini Rice
20-minute Dill Turmeric Pilaf with Pistachios
20-minute Dill Turmeric Pilaf with Pistachios
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups basmati rice (rinsed in a colander and then soaked in water for at least 30 minutes)
- ½ teaspoon turmeric
- ½ cup dill (chopped)
- 1 medium onion (thinly sliced)
- 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
- 5 pods green cardamom pods (slightly crushed)
- ¼ cup pistachios (plus more for garnish. Use raw pistachios, not roasted)
- 2 bay leaves
- 3 cups vegetable stock (or water)
- Salt and ground black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the bay leaves cardamom and when they start to brown lightly, in about a minute, add the onion. Saute for a minute or two until the onion starts to turn translucent.
- Add the dill leaves, pistachios, and the turmeric. Stir to mix. Add the rice and stir-fry for a minute or until the rice begins to turn slightly opaque.
- Add the vegetable stock and salt and ground black pepper to taste. Stir to mix and let the water come to a boil.
- Cover the saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook for 15 minutes.
- Turn off the heat and let the rice stand, undisturbed, for another 10 minutes. Uncover, fluff the rice with a fork, garnish with more pistachios if desired, and serve.
Recipe notes
Nutrition
Mandy
These kinds of simple and tasty dishes are my favorite. I also don't use dill as often in my cooking as I should so I am excited. Will try soon, thanks for the recipe.